1491 | Granta

  • Published: 02/10/2014
  • ISBN: 9781783781423
  • Granta Books
  • 576 pages

1491

Charles C. Mann

Up until very recently it was believed that in 1491, the year before Columbus landed, the Americas, one-third of the earth’s surface, were a near-pristine wilderness inhabited by small roaming bands of indigenous people. But recently unexpected discoveries have dramatically changed our understanding of Indian life. Many scholars now argue that the Indians were much more numerous, were in the Americas for far longer and had far more ecological impact on the land than previously believed. This knowledge has enormous implications for today’s environmental disputes, yet little has filtered into textbooks and even less into public awareness. Mann brings together all of the latest research, and the results of his own travels throughout North and South America, to provide a new, fascinating and iconoclastic account of the Americas before Columbus.

Brilliantly insightful and unsettling book

Paul Muldoon, Times Literary Supplement

A brilliant and startling exploration of the largely unrecognised great prehistoric cultures of the Americas

Popular Science Review

Mann rewrites the history of the new world before Columbus. It should be compulsory reading for anyone teaching the history of the Americas

Tribune

The Author

Charles Mann is the co-author of four previous books, including The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics and Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species. He is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and Science magazines, and editorial coordinator for the internationally best-selling Material World books. He lives in Massachusetts.

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From the Same Author

1493

Charles C. Mann

Two hundred million years ago the earth consisted of a single vast continent, Pangea, surrounded by a great planetary sea. Continental drift tore apart Pangaea, and for millennia the hemispheres were separate, evolving almost entirely different suites of plants and animals. Columbus’s arrival in the Americas brought together these long-separate worlds. Many historians believe that this collision of ecosystems and cultures – the Columbian Exchange – was the most consequential event in human history since the Neolithic Revolution. And it was the most consequential event in biological history since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Beginning with the world of microbes and moving up the species ladder to mankind, Mann rivetingly describes the profound effect this exchanging of species had on the culture of both continents.